January on the GodWiki will be a month-long content drive, dedicated to creativity and inspiration, centered around the topic of beer!Lagers and Tigers and Bears, Oh My! It is organised by players for players, to encourage and celebrate creativity on the GodWiki.

The principles of JanuWiki are the principles of the GodWiki in general:

Be respectful. Everybody here wants the same thing, and the GodWiki is a place of collaboration and support. We are respectful of the efforts and intentions of everyone here.

Do your best and ask for help. It doesn't matter to us if you aren't a skilled writer, or your English isn't perfect. We have volunteer editors available at the Help:Requests page who will help anyone with their writing, and give every JanuWiki article a quick polish.

Get Started

Pick a subject...

This is a table of Beer-themed pages, and some magic "Quick start" links we've made for the event. Don't see the article you want listed? Create it! It's JanuWiki-eligible. You can copy the relevant quick-start page from the set below into your new page text box, and start writing about your monster, artifact, tavern, or quest. (If you don't use a quick-start link, that's fine, just paste:

{{Godwiki event construction|author={{subst:REVISIONUSER}}}}

at the top of your article and save it, to mark your article as a part of JanuWiki.)

... and write!

What we hope for JanuWiki is the creation of great quality and creative articles about some of the things your heroine or hero encounters in Godville. So we're intentionally being pretty loose with the guidelines for writers, because creativity comes first. But, nonetheless, here are some important things to keep in mind:

Length: Good articles are usually more than a few sentences long. If your article is just a few sentences, or just one or two short paragraphs, then you probably need to develop your idea some more to make it great. If a JanuWiki volunteer editor thinks that you've got a good start and that you should keep expanding before they count it as a completed JanuWiki article, they'll let you know on your article's Talk: page to keep working on it.

Picture: We want the GodWiki to be a little more interesting than just a bunch of text, and the aim is to have at least one picture on each article. You'll get more points for an article if you've got a picture of your subject. If you have trouble with uploading or adding your picture, leave a request for help from an editor at Help:Requests with what picture you want included in what article, and we'll help.

Infobox: Articles about monsters, artifacts, and equipment often use an infobox. It's a handy way of summarising the basic information about the item at a glance, and ensures the article gets put in the right categories. You don't have to use an infobox in your article if you don't want to, but it's usually a good idea. The quick start links in the tables above will give you the appropriate blank infobox for your article type, if applicable. See "#How do I include or change an infobox?" below for more information, and leave a message on Help:Requests if you're having trouble with something in your article.

One article at a time: You are welcome to take your time with your article — sometimes quality and inspiration can't be rushed — but we do ask that you keep your creative efforts focused on one article at a time, to leave plenty of choice of articles for other creators to work on.

As well as those suggestions, there are some rules and standards that all GodWiki content is held to, and JanuWiki is no exception:

No offensive content. The GodWiki has the same terms of use as the rest of Godville. To quote from item 5: "the Player's content will not include any offensive comments that are connected to race, national origin, gender, sexual preference or physical handicap, any profanity or any obscene, indecent, pornographic, sexual or otherwise objectionable content or language." This applies without exception to the GodWiki, and any material deemed inappropriate by a volunteer editor or by Godville Administrators will be removed.

No unnecessary references to specific guilds, gods, heroines or heroes. There are appropriate places on the GodWiki for stories about guilds, gods, and heroines. While it can be tempting to make a cool artifact, equipment item, or monster have a backstory linked to a specific player or guild, GodWiki articles should allow every player to feel a connection to the objects in the game. Volunteer editors will make any edits required to remove specific references to a guild, god, or heroine, and make an article relevant to everyone.

I'm done, what now?

Mark your article as complete.

If you followed the steps above, your article will have a {{Godwiki event construction}} template at the top, notifying people that it's a part of JanuWiki, and that you're currently working on it. This is a way to show everyone, including volunteer editors, that it's a work in progress.

When you've finished writing and making changes, and your article is ready, it's time to let the volunteer editors know! The simplest way to do that is to edit the article source and change:{{Godwiki event construction|...}}
to: {{Godwiki event review|...}}

(Replace "construction" with "review", and leave the rest of the code unchanged.)

This will mark your article as ready for review, and we'll be able to keep track of everyone's progress.

You can also let us know that you're done at Help:Requests. Be sure to clearly say that your article is complete. Someone will take care of placing the {{Godwiki event review}} template in your article.

Once your article is completed and awaiting review, feel free to start another JanuWiki article if you wish! Don't forget to keep an eye on your articles under review, though: volunteer editors will take a look over it, and if they have any questions or advice for you, they'll leave notes on the article's discussion page (known as its "Talk: page").

When the review is finished, a volunteer editor will add your article to the list in the "Progress" section, and give you the credit (and points) you've earned!

Progress

Would you like to volunteer?

JanuWiki has taken off, and has grown faster than we ever expected! If you'd like to join our team of volunteer editors, who look over and give a polish to all completed content, keep the information on this page up-to-date, and just generally help out around the place, head over to the Help:Requests page and take a look at what happens there.

It isn't essential that you understand how the wiki works, just that you have a desire to make our creators' content really shine, and want to learn what you don't know. If you have trouble or questions the other volunteer editors will gladly help you out. Get in touch with any of the volunteer editors listed, or ask a question at Help talk:Requests if you're curious!

The creators of the best five JanuWiki articles with a female protagonist (named or unnamed) will earn 4 charges. (The use of {{he or she}} for the main protagonist will not count for this side job.) Judged by Djonni (talk).

The creators of the best five JanuWiki articles that use the {{he or she}}, {{hero or heroine}}, etc. templates throughout, so that the gender in the text changes daily, will earn 4 charges. Judged by Djonni (talk).

Harvest Moon members who write 5 full articles or expand 5 stubs into full articles (generation of stubs does not qualify) during JanuWiki will be paid 250 charges by Hairplug4men. (All non-Harvest Moon members wishing to credit their articles to Harvest Moon may apply to HP4M for permission to participate in this Side Job.) Judged by Hairplug4men (talk) and tracked by SourceRunner.

Technical stuff

We really want to emphasise this: you don't need to understand anything technical about the wiki to be a part of the content drive. Really. You don't. All you need is inspiration. There are people who will help out with anything you need to support your creativity.

That said, there are some very common questions about writing on the GodWiki that you can find answers to here!

Sometimes, though, you want to link to a page in the wiki with a title that isn't exactly the same as the text in the link. That's called a pipe link, and it uses the upright bar (or pipe) character — | — to tell the wiki what to link to. A lot of the wiki's features use a pipe to separate things.

To make a pipe link, put the destination page before the pipe, then the text to show on your page. In other words, [[link to this page|from this text]].

Just remember, "link then text" for a pipe link. If you make a mistake, but it's clear what you intended, an editor can fix it for you as well.

For the purposes of JanuWiki, that's all you need to know! There are other things you can do, of course, including links to pages on external websites, and links directly to the Godville pages for guilds, goddesses and gods, pantheons, forum posts, admin blog posts, and more, but if you're writing an article for JanuWiki, you probably shouldn't be linking to those things anyway. There is a lot of information on using links in wikis on the mediawiki:Help:Links page, and a list of the templates created for use here on the GodWiki in Category: Linking templates.

How do I format text?

The wiki uses a slightly different formatting system to the rest of Godville. The most common formatting you'll ever need are italics and bold. To make those, simply enclose the text in two or three pairs of single apostrophes: ''...'' for italics, '''...''' for bold, and '''''...''''' for both.

If you know how to format text on the Godville Forums, here's a handy guide that will help you get started. If you still prefer to use the forum formatting style, no problem! Just use that, and an editor will come along to make everything look the way you expect.

Again, if there's no file matching the name supplied, you'll be given a link to upload one. (If you were expecting an image, try hitting "Show preview" again on your edit, or check your filename for typos.)

There are a lot of options for [[File:...]] to change the way your image is displayed, and where, including sizes, alignments (try changing center to left or right), frames, captions, and more. The page at mediawiki:Help:Images has a comprehensive guide.

How do I make or change headings?

You can make a section heading in your article by surrounding it in equals signs (=). The more equals signs, the smaller the heading ("lower level" headings, as they're called).

The heading at the top of this section is a Level 2 heading, the highest level that should be used in most articles, and is made by putting this on a line:

==Technical Stuff==

The level 3 heading for this sub-section is made by putting this on a line:

===Headings===

You probably don't want to make a lot of headings in a normal article, nor many levels deep, but if you want to, you know how!

How do I include or change an infobox?

You will notice that many articles have an infobox in the top right. If you use one of the magic links in the tables above, you will have an empty infobox ready to use. The wikicode to make an empty infobox looks something like this:

{{monster
| image =
| class =
| habitat =
| description =
}}

Infoboxes are examples of templates, special codes used to insert information into wiki pages, which are identified by their curly brackets: {{...}}. To fill the information into the infobox, simply write something brief after each =. It's not required that each parameter be on a new line, so long as each is separated by a pipe: |.

Each infobox supports other parameters, but the quick start links will give you the ones you're most likely to use. You can find a full description of the options and parameters for each infobox template at its wiki page.

Not every article type has an infobox. Taverns, skills, and quests don't have enough regular information on each page for an infobox to be necessary. And if you decide you don't want to use an infobox in your article, that's fine too. One of the advantages of infoboxes is that they automatically take care of categorising your page for you (see What are categories? below), but that can easily be done manually by you or by an editor.

What are categories?

Categories are a way of tagging and organising GodWiki content, and you don't need to worry about them unless you're interested. Often, they're handled automatically, and when they're not, a technical editor will come along and add or remove categories as necessary.

Categories are added to pages automatically when you put an infobox in your article. For example, {{artifact}} will categorise your article into [[Category:Artifacts]], and {{artifact|type=bold}} will also categorise it into [[Category:Bold artifacts]]. If you don't use the infobox templates, or if you need to manually categorise a page for any reason, then at the very end of the article you can write [[Category:Category name]]. For example, this JanuWiki page has been added to the "Backstage" category by adding [[Category:Backstage]] at the end, since it's a page about the GodWiki itself, not about something in the Godville universe. Whenever you're curious, you can look at how this page is put together, or how any page on the wiki is put together, by clicking "Edit" (or "View source") at the top of the page.

Some frequently asked questions

So this is about beer?

Nope! It's about creativity, and having fun. Beer is just the theme we've used to select a list of game items for the event. Everything on the JanuWiki list has something to do with beer, but that's really the only connection — your writing needn't actually have anything to do with beer.

Can I create an article that's not on the list?

Absolutely! Create whatever you like! The JanuWiki list is for ideas, not for limits. If you create a quality article unrelated to the theme during JanuWiki and would like it to be counted, let our volunteer editors know at Help:Requests and they will give it the same treatment as any other JanuWiki content.

JanuWiki says one thing, but the Guidelines say another, why?

The Creators Manual, the various Guidelines, and a lot of the GodWiki's old policies and help pages are badly out of date. They need a lot of work, and don't give new users the right impression and guidance. We're hoping that JanuWiki will bring the culture of creativity and support that we want to rebuild those old documents around into focus, and that helping a lot of new creators will show us what really needs to be in them, so they can be rewritten well.

So we don't want to tell you to completely ignore the creators manual and the guideline pages, even though they're not perfect. But we do want all of us to focus on creativity first, and not let technical details get in anyone's way.

How can I get help with my article?

We have set up a page at Help:Requests where anyone can seek help with their GodWiki creations. There's a place where you can put up a request for help with spelling, grammar, phrasing, or simply ask for a general review of a page. There's also a place where you can put up a request for help with some technical aspect of the wiki. There are volunteer editors who will help you out, by looking at your page and making helpful changes.

You can see what changes have been made to any page on the "History" tab. Our volunteer editors will try to leave edit summaries in the page history, and will also leave a summary of what they've done at Help:Requests. It's a good idea to keep an eye on the Talk: page associated with the article you've requested help with, in case there's something the volunteer editor wants to ask or discuss.

My English isn't very good, can I join in?

Absolutely! The Godville community is rich and varied, and there are a lot of deities who aren't native speakers of English. JanuWiki is a festival of New Year creativity, and the only things we need to have in common are Godville and enthusiasm.

Every JanuWiki article will receive the careful attention of a volunteer editor, who will do their very best to ensure your creativity shines through, regardless of your written English skills.

I'm a guild leader/volunteer editor/Godville Administrator, can I join in?

Of course! Everyone's invited.

Can I reserve an article subject in advance?

No, we're going to give everyone the same chance at their favourite subject at the stroke of midnight on January 1st, Godville Times time. There are a few reasons for this. One is, we don't want to disadvantage people who are too busy over Christmas to get in a reservation. Another is, we don't want to give anyone the impression that they're only invited if they're on the list. And another is, there are so many subjects available that the risk of colliding with another creator are pretty small.

But just because you can't reserve a subject doesn't mean you can't get a head start if you want! Each of us has our own unique User: page on the GodWiki. It's a space you're welcome to use in any way you like, and though anybody can read it, only you can edit it. If you'd like to start preparing, writing, planning, or experimenting with formatting, it's the ideal place to do it. You can get to your User page by clicking your name at the top (on desktop) or bottom (on mobile) of any page, or by clicking here.

Who's running this thing?

Everybody! Nobody! It's not important. The idea is to focus on creators, not organisers. Everyone can have a say, and everyone can help. If you have an idea or suggestion, you should head to the Talk:JanuWiki 2019 page, or, if you see something that just needs to be fixed or done, go ahead and Be Bold! If you want to help other creators with editing, proofreading, grammar, or wiki technical issues, you could also list yourself as a volunteer editor on the Help:Requests page, which would mean people might contact you for help with the wiki or with their article, and you might be assigned an article to proofread and give a final thumbs up to.

Okay, but I have an actual problem and I need to talk to someone.

Well, it's the volunteer editors listed at Help:Requests who are keeping the lights on and kicking the tyres for JanuWiki. If you have trouble you can't solve, speak to one of us and we'll help in any way we can. Nobody here has any kind of special powers or administrative access, and everything on the GodWiki is fuelled by discussion, consensus, and mutual respect, so those are the tools we use to solve everything here. If you want anonymity, directly messaging a volunteer editor through Godville is usually fine, unless noted on that editor's GodWiki User page.

Hypothetically, if something really problematic comes up, the volunteer editors can advocate for a solution with the Godville Admins who, as with all things Godville, are the Gods among the gods. We don't anticipate that something like that will be necessary though — we're all here to have fun and be creative, after all.